Join me on Friday at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / midnight UTC for the Planetary Society's weekly hangout. Note the special time! In this week's show I'll talk with MESSENGER deputy principal investigator Larry Nittler about what MESSENGER has accomplished in its prime and extended missions at Mercury, and what it stands to do if awarded a mission extension.

Announcement: If you missed Wednesday's Hangout with Dante Lauretta, the recording has been fixed! Go here to watch it.

The video is embedded below. It will not play until the broadcast starts. If it does not appear for you, please refresh the page or just go to Youtube. Once the show is over, you can watch the recording here. You can ask questions here, on Twitter with hashtag #planetarylive, or on comments on the Youtube page for the video, and I'll relay them to my guest.

NASA / JHUAPL / CIW / color mosaic by Jason Perry

Mercury in color from MESSENGER

As it departed from its second flyby of Mercury, MESSENGER snapped a color mosaic of the planet using its wide-angle camera; this version is a four-frame (2x2) mosaic of images captured through the red, green, and blue filters. Mercury's color variations are very subtle. This view consisted almost entirely of territory not previously seen from a spacecraft and included a spectacular set of rays radial to a small impact crater located near Mercury's north pole.

Comments:

MrPhacops: 05/02/2013 04:27 CDT

Q: Messenger is closer to the Sun than most spacecraft. Is there cooperations / will there be projects with heliophysicists/ solar radioastronomers? Can any instrument be used to explicitly collect any signals/data sets which are not from Mercury but from the Sun?

KS Craig: 05/03/2013 07:50 CDT

Please discuss what has been observed at the antipodal area of the Caloris Basin as well as features in the Caloris basin.
What is the plan for close up observations for the next extended mission?
Is there communications with the Beppi Columbo team and what does that entail?